Reid: Iraq Drawdown Plan Unacceptable
Published: 9/12/07, 4:47 PM EDT
By ANNE FLAHERTY
WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday rejected the call by the top U.S. general in Iraq to send 30,000 U.S. troops home by next summer, saying it does not go far enough. "This is unacceptable to me, it's unacceptable to the American people," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Reid said the recommendation by Gen. David Petraeus, expected to be embraced by President Bush in a speech to the nation on Thursday, "is neither a drawdown or a change in mission that we need. His plan is just more of the same."
"I call on the Senate Republicans to not walk lockstep as they have with the president for years in this war. It's time to change. It's the president's war. At this point it also appears clear it's also the Senate Republicans' war," Reid told a Capitol Hill news conference.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the troop buildup Bush announced in January had been intended to give the fledgling Iraqi government breathing room to establish itself.
But that government remains dysfunctional and "the president is just going to stay the course indefinitely," Levin said. He said that even Petraeus, in two days of congressional testimony, acknowledged that the purpose of the military buildup, which the administration has called a "surge," had not been accomplished.
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